Spam - past and future
Costin RaiuKaspersky Lab
Technical stream: Thursday 25 Sept 2003, 09.30-10.10.
Spam - past and future
Even if viruses and Trojans are still the holders for the infamous 'most widespread kind
of malware' award, last year showed some new trends making their appearance in the security
world. Already old, spam is becoming more and more widespread, and accompanied by dialers
and IE exploits, is becoming an even greater threat than viruses.
For instance, according to various statistics the average email user is receiving about one
infected message every week. On the other hand, the number of spam emails received can be
as high as ten per day, of which some can directly open web pages further exploiting
various IE bugs to install dialers or spyware.
This paper will take an in-depth look at spam, the most recent techniques used to create
'undetectable' (by AntiSpam software) messages and the technology which is currently used
against this increasing threat. Eventually, we'll see what are the most promising future
solutions, such as the Bayesian neural networks and analyse their limitations and expected
efficiency.
